When a Bar Harbor restaurant closed last year, Julie Berberian and Julie Harris were out of work. But they didn’t want to be. So they teamed up with College of the Atlantic senior Susanne Hathaway and opened Cafe This Way a year ago. The Julies got to work again, and Susanne used the experience as her senior project on starting a business in a small community.

It’s tempting to quote Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin here and say: The sisters are doing it for themselves. Because, a year later, they still are — and quite nicely, we might add. But the truth is, these “business sisters” are doing it for the rest of us, too. That is, Cafe This Way has an organic canniness — in an earthy, we-might’ve-guessed-they-went-to-COA (and two of them did) kind of way.

The decor is rich and dark like coffee, and warm and cozy like a lodge. Some people take their meals (breakfast and dinner only) at a central area with couches and plants. Others sit at designer tables — designed by the owners, that is — featuring their baby pictures, tributes to the 1970s and a memorial to Elvis Presley complete with black velvet.

More impressive, however, is the library that lines one wall and is available to any on-site patron. You want “The Iliad” with dinner? Dostoevsky with your muffin? “My Mother Myself”? A Sue Grafton mystery? A little Ayn Rand? History, herstory, poetry? You got it. And if you’re antsy, or perhaps tipsy, you may choose from a selection of games including Mister Potato Head or Operation. You might even want to work out a philosophical treatise with the poetry magnets on the lone refrigerator door attached to one corner of the large open room. (Let’s just call the refrigerator art, and leave it at that, OK?)

The decor is not the only clever impulse at Cafe This Way. Good thinking shows up in tiny culinary details on the dinner menu, too. Take for instance the tequila-lime sauce on the crab cake appetizers. The flavor is so delicate and unexpected, so dessertlike in appearance yet piquant in taste, that it emboldens you to think you CAN have your cake and eat it too.

From the same list comes other unmistakable signs of clever cuisine — dabs of wasabi on a tuna sausage, mussels steamed in apple cider, portobello mushrooms sauteed with balsamic vinegar, artichokes stuffed with trout, a baked asiago cheese plate with olive tapenade. True to their hardy natures, the owners use garlic here, there and nearly everywhere. And, of course, goat cheese and roasted red peppers, both of which have become compulsory in today’s precocious restaurants — make honorable appearances.

If you’re looking for steamed lobster — the most sought-after entree in this tourist town — you’ll have to go some other way because Cafe This Way doesn’t serve it. Too boring. Too islandy. And, if I might interject a personal note here, too barbaric for the scruples of This Way.

Filet mignon, however, is not misplaced, nor miscooked in this establishment. Grilled with fresh basil and (what else?) garlic butter and topped with shrimp, only one word can describe this generous cushion of beef: soft. Not tender (because that’s too tony). But soft and pink and thrilling.

The salmon with a Dijon, sweet-potato crust and (you guessed it) roasted garlic butter, wins “best new combo” for fish dishes. Other fish offerings include a shrimp and scallop dish with an orange-sesame glaze served over sticky rice cakes, tuna with apples and honey, and entree versions of both the mussels and crab cakes.

If you don’t eat red meat or fish, there is cashew-crusted chicken with a sesame ginger aioli, or butternut squash ravioli with roasted red peppers as well as broccoli and a rosemary maple cream.

On a recent night, the side veggies were whipped potatoes with flecks of potato skins, and a fascinating combo of coarsely pureed butternut squash with bits of corn. Both were served in wholesome portions and were perfectly suited to the cool autumn night.

Homemade desserts include a drop-dead chocolate raspberry truffle cake, fruit crisps (depending on what’s in season), a cheesecake (also with unique properties) and lemon parfait. Two bites of the chocolate peanut butter fudge cake go a long, long way. Three bites go much further. Four bites, well, that crosses the line into shameless indulgence. Any dessert that has five words in its name and makes you daffy in three bites is well worth the price of admission.

Speaking of which, the prices at Cafe This Way are entirely reasonable. Appetizers cost between $5 and $8, and entrees go from $11 to $18. The wine list is small and affordable, which says enough on its own. You might also find that some of the food is dusted a tiny bit too heavily with oil. But the kitchen is open to the eating area, however, and presumably you could have a nice chat with the enterprising owners about that. Julie H. is the chef with the derring-do. Julie B. and Susanne run the rest of the show with a domestic conviviality.

Finally, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that Cafe This Way will be opened for breakfast and lunch beginning Nov. 7 and for the whole winter. (Yea!) The bad news is that dinners (and breakfasts) end this Saturday, when the place closes for two weeks. (Boo.)

If we’re lucky, the owners will decide to run Friday night cabin fever dinners — which have a fixed menu and only one seating — after the first of the year. (Yea!)

Cafe This Way is located at 14 1/2 Mount Desert St. (formerly The Unusual Cabaret) in Bar Harbor. Telephone 288-4483.